General

What is Inkscape?

Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X. What sets Inkscape apart is its use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open XML-based W3C standard, as the native format.

What is vector graphics?

In contrast to raster (bitmap) graphics editors such as Photoshop or Gimp, Inkscape stores its graphics in a vector format. Vector graphics is a resolution-independent description of the actual shapes and objects that you see in the image. A rasterization engine uses this information to determine how to plot each line and curve at any resolution or zoom level.

Contrast that to bitmap (raster) graphics which is always bound to a specific resolution and stores an image as a grid of pixels.

Vector graphics are a complement, rather than an alternative, to bitmap graphics. Each has its own purpose and are useful for different kinds of things. Raster graphics tend to be better for photographs and some kinds of artistic drawings, whereas vectors are more suitable for design compositions, logos, images with text, technical illustrations, etc.

Note that Inkscape can import and display bitmap images, too. An imported bitmap becomes yet another object in your vector graphics, and you can do with it everything you can do to other kinds of objects (move, transform, clip, etc.)

What is 'Scalable Vector Graphics'?

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an open, industry-standard XML-based format for vector graphics developed by the W3C. Its acceptance is growing fast. Most vector editors these days can import and export SVG, and modern browsers (such as Firefox and Opera) can display it directly, i.e. without requiring any plugins. (For Internet Explorer, there's an SVG Viewer plugin from Adobe.) For more information, see #SVG topics below.

Is Inkscape ready for regular users to use?

Yes! While Inkscape does not have all the features of the leading vector editors, the latest versions provide for a large portion of basic vector graphics editing capabilities. People report successfully using Inkscape in a lot of very different projects (web graphics, technical diagrams, icons, creative art, logos, maps). For example, thousands of images on Wikipedia are created_with_Inkscape, as is the majority of the content on openclipart; many examples of Inkscape art can be seen here and here. We try to always keep the codebase usable for real users, as we believe that a tight iteration cycle between users and developers will give best results. You can start using Inkscape alongside your other tools now!

What platforms does Inkscape run on?

We provide binary packages for Linux, Windows 2000/2003/XP (fully self-contained installer), and OSX (dmg package). We know that Inkscape is successfully used on FreeBSD and other Unix-like operating systems. Note that Windows 98/ME is no longer supported.

How did Inkscape start?

Inkscape was started as a fork of Sodipodi, in late 2003, by four Sodipodi developers: Bryce Harrington, MenTaLguY, Nathan Hurst, and Ted Gould. Our mission was creating a fully compliant Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) drawing tool written in C++ with a new, more user friendly (Gnome HIG compliant) interface and an open, community-oriented development process. Within several months the project had produced several releases, demonstrating a sequence of significant new features and improvements to the codebase and quickly established Inkscape as a noteworthy Open Source project.

What does 'Inkscape' mean?

The name is made up of the two English words 'ink' and 'scape'. Ink
is a common substance for drawings, and is used when the sketched work
is ready to be permanently committed to paper, and thus evokes the idea
that Inkscape is ready for production work. A scape is a
view of a large number of objects, such as a landscape or ocean-scape, and thus
alludes to the object-oriented nature of vector imagery.

Can I create webpages with it?

Sort of.

Many webpage authors use Inkscape for webpage mockups or to generate parts of web pages, such as banners, logos, icons, and more.

With the recent advances in SVG support in web browsers (such as Firefox or Opera), using SVG directly on the web becomes more of a possibility. For example, with Firefox 1.5 or better, you can open any Inkscape SVG document right in the browser, and Firefox will show it correctly. In theory, SVG and XHTML can be used together within the same document, so interested users or developers can explore this possibility further.

Unfortunately, even though SVG is the internet standard for vector graphics,
some older (but still common) web browsers fail to support SVG.

Web page authors who need to support widest variety of web browsers convert each SVG graphic to a raster image (.png) as the very last step.

How do I make a SVG object that link to an internet site when I click on it ?

Can I create animations with it?

No, Inkscape does not support SVG animation yet. It is for static 2-D graphics. However you can export graphics from Inkscape to use in Flash or GIF animations. And since February 2006, Blender can import SVG data and extrude it to render 3D graphics.

Will there be an Inkscape 1.00? What would it be like?

Assuming development continues steadily, we will inevitably hit 1.00,
but no particular date has been discussed yet.

Before going gold with any kind of 1.00 release, there would be a significant effort to tie down loose ends, a push for greater stability and smoothing off of rough edges. This would be a time consuming process and until it does happen Inkscape may be subject to substantial changes between releases.

Using Inkscape

How do I rotate objects?

Inkscape follows the convention used by CorelDraw, Xara and some other programs: instead of a separate "rotate" tool, you switch to Selector (arrow), click to select, and then click selected objects again. The handles around the object become rotation handles - drag them to rotate. You can also use the Transform dialog for precise rotation and the [, ] keys to rotate selection from the keyboard.

How do I change the color of text?

Text is not different from any other type of object in Inkscape. You can paint its fill and stroke with any color, as you would do with any object. Swatches palette, Fill and Stroke dialog, pasting style - all this works on texts exactly as it does on, for example, rectangles. Moreover, if in the Text tool you select part of a text by Shift+arrows or mouse drag, any color setting method will apply only to the selected part of the text.

How do I change the color of markers (e.g. arrow ends)?

By default markers are black. You can change their color to match the color of the stroke of the object they are applied on using an effect: Effects > Modify Path > Color markers to match stroke.

How to insert math symbols or other special symbols in the drawing?

When editing text on canvas, press Ctrl+U, then type the Unicode code point of the symbol you need. A preview of the symbol is shown in the statusbar. When done, press Enter. A list of Unicode codes can be found at unicode.org;
for example, the integral sign character is "222b". You must have a font installed on your system that has this character; otherwise what you'll see is a placeholder rectangle.

When editing text on the Text tab of the Text and Font dialog, you can use any GTK input modes that your GTK installation supports. Consult GTK documentation for details.

When saving your work in eps format, we recommend to set the option "convert text to path" in the export dialog box, to preserve the symbol.

How can sine curves be made in Inkscape?

In 0.43, Inkscape includes an extension called Function Plotter (before that it was called Wavy). It can be used to create sine curves or any other function graphs.
Other software, such as Xfig, KiG, or KSEG can also be used to create complex curves and then export to SVG for use in Inkscape.

How to measure distances and angles?

Inkscape does not yet have a dedicated Measure tool. However, the Pen tool can be used in its stead. Switch to Pen (Shift+F6), click at one end of the segment you want to measure, and move the mouse (without clicking) to its other end. In the statusbar, you will see the distance and angle measurement. Then press Esc to cancel.

The angle is measured by default from 3 o'clock origin counterclockwise (the mathematical convention), but in Preferences you can switch this to using compass-like measurement (from 12 o'clock, clockwise).

Starting from 0.44 we also have the Measure Path extension that will measure the length of an arbitrary path.

Does Inkscape support palettes? Where can I "store" and save colours for further use?

Starting from 0.42, palettes are supported using the same
file format as the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP Colour Palettes, .gpl).
The name used in Inkscape for the feature is "swatches".
When selecting this terminology, we surveyed a number of
different programs and found that both "palettes" and "swatches" were
commonly found. Since the term palettes had been already been used in Inkscape to describe a particular type of dialog windows, the term "swatches" was adopted to describe this feature.

How can I print the tutorials? When printed from Inkscape they don't fit, and I don't like reading on screen.

All tutorials in all languages are available online in HTML at
this page and can be easily printed from your browser.

Can I use different settings for the new documents created by Inkscape?

Yes. When you do File > New (Ctrl+N) or start a new Inkscape session, Inkscape loads the default template document which stores page format, grid and guide parameters, snapping and export settings, etc. It can even contain any pre-created objects. You can save any document as the default template by writing it to ~/.inkscape/templates/default.svg on Linux and [inkscape
dir]/share/templates/default.svg on Windows. If you save it under any other name than default.svg in the same folder, it will appear in the File > New submenu but will not load automatically unless chosen.

Is there a way to apply a gradient to a stroke so that it bends with the stroke?

A stroke can be painted with a gradient, but that gradient will not bend with the stroke. It will remain linear or elliptic. If you meant something like this, then SVG can emulate such effects using SVG Filters which Inkscape does not yet support.

There are, however, a couple of workarounds. One is described here. The other is to use the Blend extension to create a blend between two curved paths painted with different colors or opacity levels; with enough intermediate steps, such a blend will look almost like an arbitrarily curved gradient.

I'm trying to make a colored tiling of clones, but the tiles refuse to change color.

The original object from which you're cloning must have its fill or stroke unset (not removed, but unset!) for this to work. Use the "?" button in the Fill&stroke dialog to unset fill, or use the "Unset" command in the right-click menu of the selected style indicator in the statusbar. If the original is a group, only some of the objects in the group may have unset fill, and only these objects will change colors in the tiling.

I'm trying to apply a gradient opacity mask to an object, but the entire object disappears.

Note that per SVG rules, black color is opaque in a mask (i.e. it obscures the object under it); white color is transparent (the object shows through). What's more, the "no color" fill or full transparency is equivalent to "transparent black", i.e. (rather counterintuitively) also becomes opaque in a mask. So, if you want to make your object gradually masked out, create the masking gradient either from white to transparent, or from white to black. The detailed rules of SVG masks are defined in [1].

The PNGs exported by Inkscape have jagged edges/no antialiasing/funny background.

This is a problem with whatever you use to view these PNG files, not with Inkscape. For example, Internet Explorer prior to version 7 cannot show PNG files with transparency properly. Use e.g. Firefox to view your PNGs. If you absolutely must support IE 6, you can't have transparent background in PNG; change it to opaque in Document Preferences and export the PNG file again.

If you want to open the exported PNG bitmaps in MS-Word, you will also have to change the alpha-opacity (in document-properties dialog) to full, and then export -- the result will be much better.

I have two adjacent objects with their edges abutting precisely, but at some zoom levels, a seam is still visible.

That's a known problem of our renderer (as well as many other renderers, for example Xara's). Antialiased display sometimes results in not-fully-opaque pixels along the boundary of two objects even if there's absolutely no gap between them. There are several ways to avoid this problem. If your boundary is horizontal or vertical, you can suppress antialiasing by pixel-snapping (see next question). Often, you can just union the two shapes so they become one and the seam disappears. If this is not possible, just add a small overlap to the abutting shapes. If this isn't possible either (for example, due to transparency of these objects), sometimes blurring can help: in Inkscape 0.45+, you can group the two objects and slightly blur the group to make the seam disappear.

How to suppress antialiasing?

With the current renderer, it is not possible to completely get rid of antialiasing. However, it is possible to partially suppress it on export. Usually, antialiasing is unwelcome in horizontal and vertical lines which become "blurred". To work around this, make sure your horizontal/vertical edges are snapped on the pixel grid, and all strokes are a whole number of pixels wide. Then, export bitmap at the default 90dpi so that 1 px unit corresponds to 1 bitmap pixel. In the resulting bitmap, snapped color boundaries will be perfectly crisp.

Can Inkscape be used from the command line?

Yes, Inkscape has a powerful command line interface and can be used in scripts for a variety of tasks, such as exporting and format conversions. For details, refer to the manual page (online, or via the Help > Command line options command, or by man inkscape on Unix).

I'm on Windows, and command line parameters don't seem to work!

Actually, things like exporting or converting to plain SVG do work, they just do not output anything to the console. This is because Inkscape on Windows is a GUI application and is not allowed to have any console output. (This means that query options (such as --query-x) will not work at all.) Note, however, that on Windows you must provide full paths for all files:

inkscape -e c:\mydir\file.png c:\mydir\file.svg

Without the c:\mydir\ it won't work. If the path contains spaces, you must enclose it all into quotes, for example "c:\my dir\file.svg".

Console output can be restored if you recompile Inkscape for Windows as a console application. See this page for general Windows compilation instructions; edit the file Makefile.mingw.common in the source tree's root directory and replace

-lgc -mwindows -lws2_32 -lintl

with

-lgc -mconsole -lws2_32 -lintl -lgdi32 -lcomdlg32

then recompile. This will give you an inkscape.exe which works exactly as it does on Linux with regard to command line parameters and console output. If you regularly use Inkscape's command line interface on Windows, please send a message to the inkscape-devel list and we may consider providing such a console executable in our official Inkscape Windows builds.

How to make Alt+click and Alt+drag work on Linux?

Alt+click and Alt+drag are very useful Inkscape shortcuts ("select under" and "move selected" in Selector, "node sculpting" in Node tool). However, on Linux Alt+click and Alt+drag are often reserved by the window manager for manipulating the windows. You need to disable this function in your window manager so it becomes usable in Inkscape.

KDE

For example, in KDE this is done in Control Center > Desktop > Window Behavior > Window Actions.

3. You can either add the 'LANGUAGE' variable to the current user or to all users (system variables). Press the 'New' button and enter 'LANGUAGE' as the variable name, and 'C' as value if you want to select the default language (English) or e.g. 'de' if you want to set the language to german.

Inkscape does not see some of the fonts (Windows)

This was a bug in versions of Inkscape up to 0.43, caused by using an obsolete font cache. This cache is stored in the file called .fonts.cache-1. This file may be in your Windows folder, or in your Temp folder, or in "My documents" folder, or in the folder listed in the $HOME environment variable. Use file search by name to locate this file. Then simply delete this file and restart Inkscape; now it will see the new fonts.

If you are using 0.44 or later then Type1 fonts are not supported (this is a side-effect of the method used to fix the previous bug). Windows internally supports several different types of font:

Bitmap and vector fonts (red 'A' icon) will never be supported by Inkscape because they are too simple to be useful for drawing. They're generally used on-screen only.

TrueType fonts (blue/gray 'TT' icon) are fully supported

Type1 fonts (red 'a' with shadow icon) are not supported

OpenType fonts (green/black 'O' icon) come in two subtypes: TrueType outlines and PostScript outlines. To tell the difference, double click the font file from Control Panel, Fonts and read the second line of text. Inkscape supports TrueType outlines but not PostScript outlines.

The issues with unsupported Type1 and PostScript fonts are being tracked by Inkscape bug 1441767 and Pango bug 142579 (Pango is the library which provides Inkscape's font facilities).

Inkscape does not see some of the fonts (Mac OSX)

It is a problem in the way Pango (the lib Inkscape uses to manage fonts) handles .dfont (and some .suit) fonts. One solution is to convert everything to individual ttf files (Times.dfont becomes TimesRegular.ttf, TimesItalic.ttf, and so on) with fondu or/and fontforge (both are available via Fink, DarwinPorts or with standalone installers). Beware though:

you'll end up with duplicated fonts, you need to suppress or disable one version (the dfont one)

do not disable system fonts (if you need system fonts in TTF for X11 apps, put them in an X11 specific directory, such as ~/.fonts)

this can cause problems with Firefox which mozilla guys do not seem ready to solve soon because the problem seems unconsistent in its appearance

I've installed Inkscape on OS X 10.4.x, but when I run it nothing happens. The interface doesn't appear.

Under OS X 10.4.x, even on very fast machines, Inkscape versions prior to 0.44 could take a long time to start the very first time they were run. This was due to a fontconfig cache workaround that wasn't properly implemented by the launcher code. The problem has been fixed in 0.44 (though not in the prereleases 0-3).

If you are using 0.44 or later and the icon appears in the dock and suddenly disappears then you may not be running the latest version of X11. You may have, for instance, installed X11 when you were running Panther and later upgraded to Tiger. X11 does not intall automatically when upgrading OSX so you will need to manually intall X11 from your Tiger disc.

On Linux, Inkscape crashes with "invalid pointer" message

If your Inkscape crashes on start with the error message that looks like

*** glibc detected *** free(): invalid pointer: 0x086143b0 ***

this is caused by GCC versions incompatibility which affects C++ applications. Your Inkscape is compiled by a different version of GCC than the C++ libraries it uses. Recompile either Inkscape itself or its C++ libraries (libstdc++, libsigc++, libglibmm and libgtkmm) with the single GCC version and the problem will go away.

Contributing to Inkscape

How can I help the Inkscape project?

If you are a developer, grab the code and start hacking on whatever draws your attention. Send in a patch when you're happy with it and ready to share your efforts with others. We also need writers and translators for the user manual
and interface internationalization (I18N) files.

We take contributions very seriously and follow the principle of "patch
first, discuss later", so it is highly likely your efforts will appear
in the development codebase swiftly. There are of course rules and
standards that must be followed, but we try to keep them unsurprising
and obvious.

Are there non-coding ways to help?

Certainly! While there is certainly a lot of coding work to be done,
there are also a lot of other non-programming tasks needed to make the
project successful:

Bug wrangling and testing:

Identifying and characterizing bugs can help a HUGE amount by reducing
the amount of development time required to fix them.

Find and report bugs. This is a critical need for ensuring the quality of the code.

Review and verify reported bugs. Sometimes the bug reports don't have enough info, or are hard to reproduce. Try seeing if the bug occurs for you too, and add details to the description.

Performance Testing - Create SVG's that stress out Inkscape, and post them as test cases to the Inkscape bug tracker, with your time measurements.

Compatibility Testing. Compare the rendering of SVG's in Inkscape with other apps like Batik and Cairo, and report differences found (to both projects).

Bug prioritization. Bugs that are marked priority '5' are new bugs. Review them and set them to high/medium/low priority according to their severity. See Updating Tracker Items in wiki for details.

Helping fellow users

In addition to making a good drawing application, it's also extremely important
to us to build a good community around it; you can help us achieve this
goal directly, by helping other users. Above all, keep in mind that we
want to maintain Inkscape's community as a nice, polite place so
encourage good behavior through your own interactions with others in the
group.

Write tutorials. If something isn't already documented in a tutorial, write up a description of how to use it.

Participate on inkscape-user@. Answer questions that pop up on the mailing list from other users. Also, share your tips and tricks, and demo new ways of using Inkscape for cool stuff.

Give Inkscape classes. Teach people local to you about using Inkscape. Or give presentations at local events, Linux group meetings, etc. about Inkscape (and other Open Source art tools).

Development (no coding needed)

Translations. Information on how to create translations for the interface is available on the TranslationInformation page in Wiki.

Design Icons and SVG themes. Create new icons for existing themes or start a new icon theme. Also see librsvg.sf.net

Mockup new dialogs. Draw up ideas for improving or adding dialogs. These are handy to the UI developers for figuring out what to do.

Improve packaging. Figure out how to make the package for your operating system or Linux distribution install and work better. See CreatingDists in Wiki.

Add extensions. For file input/output, special features, etc. Inkscape is able to tie into external programs. Create new .inx files to hook these up for use in Inkscape. Also, if you're comfortable scripting in Perl, Python, etc. have a shot at improving the extensions, too!

Add source code documentation The source code needs even the simplest documentation in some places, documenting functions will certainly help the next coder.

Create templates. See the Inkscape share/templates directory.

Work in Wiki. Wiki is a great place for gathering development info but always needs updating, copyediting, and elaboration.

Plan future development. Review and help update the Roadmap in Wiki. Basically, talk with developers about what they're working on, planning to work on, or recently finished, and update the roadmap accordingly.

Spread the word - Inkscape Marketing and Evangelism

Increasing the size of the userbase is important.
The network effects of more interested users means more potential contributors and
hopefully people saying nice things about us, and giving Inkscape word of mouth advertising which we believe is important.
All our users and developers serve as ambassadors for Inkscape and others will judge Inkscape based on how well we behave.
It is important that we all be polite and friendly and make Inkscape a project people like using and enjoy working on, all other evangelism follows on naturally from there.
Generally though for building the community we prefer quality over quantity so be
careful not to go too overboard with evangelizing or the "hard sell".
We want to work with other applications, rather than "killing" off other software and such comments are counter productive.
We need to manage expectations. We want users to be pleasantly surprised by how much Inkscape does, not disappointed that it does not match other programs feature for feature. Inkscape should be thought of as providing artists another way to be creative which complements their existing skills and tools.

Write Articles. Get articles published in various online (or even printed) magazines and blogs. Don't forget to include a link to Inkscape!

Create Screenshots. Especially for new features.

Create Examples. Examples are useful for showcasing different ways Inkscape can be used. Create some screenshots and text, and submit to the web wranglers (via the inkscape-devel mailing list) to add to the site.

Work on the Website. Help on the website is ALWAYS appreciated. Knowledge of HTML is required; PHP know-how is helpful. Check out the website code from the Subversion (svn) repository and send patches, or request direct svn and shell access for doing on-going work.

Give presentations. Give talks at expos, symposia, and other big events about Inkscape. Be sure to announce it on an inkscape mailing list so we can post it to the Inkscape website.

Recruit more developers. Find people with an interest in doing coding, and encourage them to work on Inkscape.

Where can I get a banner for Inkscape?

Feel free to contribute your own banners or buttons for promoting Inkscape. The best ones will be linked here.

How can I avoid causing a flamewar on the mailing list?

Inkscape prides itself on maintaining a friendly community, however we're all passionate and have different ideas, so sometimes discussions can get heated. However, when folks start taking firm positions on things it is easy for arguments to get out of hand and become unproductive, possibly even driving valuable contributors away from the project. So we place a high priority on striving to keep mailing list discussions civil.

Here are some tips for effectively communicating in the Inkscape community

1) Make your argument first and foremost without comparison. Really great features can stand on their own and are obviously great from the use cases users give. Most often comparisons won't strengthen your case. In fact they can often weaken your case because there is a built up resistance to this bandwagon sort of reasoning. Many people use Inkscape to escape from the software you want to compare it with. :-)

2) Don't assume that developers, users and industry professionals are mutually exclusive groups. Itch driven development means quite the opposite. Developers are users developing the software for their own uses. Some developers are industry professionals using Inkscape for their livelihood daily. This also means that arguments that start with generalizations about user wants and expectations have to struggle against the fact that the users are developing the software the way they want it.

3) Don't assume that resistance to your idea indicates rampant disregard for non-developer-users needs and wants. Many of the developers spend large amounts of time conversing with users in person, on IRC and on the mailing list. We know when issues are important because we can hear the consensus. As anecdotal evidence most of the features I have coded have been in direct response to the needs and requests of users who came with polite and persistent concerns.

Indeed, since Inkscape developers typically judge by user consensus, an effective way to prove a point is to show a pattern of demand for the change from a range of users, or to demonstrate how your change will satisfy a large number of user requests. (This isn't to say that what the unwashed masses ask for is always correct, but there are generally strong correlations.)

4) Street cred is earned, not demanded. :-) This is just a hard fact about community life. The project needs contributors to live and thrive, and everyone loves seeing new blood getting involved, and will bend over backwards to help. The more you involve yourself; the more you give of your own blood, sweat and tears, the more the community will respond to you. The great part is that simple contributions really do matter.

Remember Inkscape's slogan, "Patch first, discuss later." This is not just an aphorism; oftentimes the principles in an argument won't really understand all the factors until they can see the thing in practice, even if just a mockup or prototype. Presenting your ideas as a patch also bypasses the concern that others are going to have to put in the labor to implement the ideas.

5) Always remember we all share common goals. If nothing else, we all want to see Inkscape made better. When a discussion feels like it's starting to get hot, it's time for the arguers to seek areas of agreement, and focus on those.

SVG topics

Are Inkscape's SVG documents valid SVG?

Yes. Inkscape does not yet support all features of SVG, but all files it generates are valid SVG (with the partial and temporary exception of flowed text, see below). All standard-conformant SVG renderers show them the same as in Inkscape. If they do not, it's a bug. If this bug is in Inkscape, we will fix it (especially if you help us by reporting it!).

What about flowed text?

When flowed text support was added to Inkscape, it was conformant to the then-current unfinished draft of SVG 1.2 specification (and was always described as an experimental feature). Unfortunately, in further SVG 1.2 drafts, the W3C decided to change the way this feature is specified. Currently SVG 1.2 is still not finished, and as a result, very few SVG renderers currently implement either the old or the new syntax of SVG 1.2 flowed text. So, technically, Inkscape SVG files that use flowed text are not valid SVG 1.1, and usually cause problems (errors or just black boxes with no text).

However, due to the utility of this much-requested feature, we decided to leave it available to users. When the final SVG 1.2 specification is published, we will change our flowed text implementation to be fully conformant to it, and will provide a way to migrate the older flowed text objects to the new format.

Until that is done, however, you should not use flowed text in documents that you intend to use outside of Inkscape. Flowed text is created by clicking and dragging in the Text tool, while simple click creates plain SVG 1.1 text; so, if you don't really need the flowing aspect, just use click to position text cursor instead of dragging to create a frame. If however you really need flowed text, you will have to convert it to regular (non-flowed) text by the "Convert to text" command in the Text menu. This command fully preserves the appearance and formatting of your flowed text but makes it non-flowed and SVG 1.1-compliant.

What, then, is "Inkscape SVG" as opposed to "Plain SVG" when saving a document?

Inkscape SVG files use the Inkscape namespace to store some extra information used by the program. Other SVG programs will not understand these extensions, but this is OK because the extensions only affect how the document is edited, not how it looks. Extensions must not cause any rendering problems in SVG-compliant renderers. However, some non-compliant renderers may have trouble with the presence of the extensions, or you may want to save some space by dropping the Inkscape information (if you're not planning to edit the file in Inkscape again). This is what the "Plain SVG" option is provided for.

What SVG features does Inkscape implement?

The main parts of SVG that Inkscape does not support yet are filters (except Gaussian blur which is supported starting from 0.45), animation, and SVG fonts. The rest mostly works, though of course there are bugs that we're always fixing. For a comparison of Inkscape and other open source SVG tools on the W3C SVG test suite, look here.

I have hand-created SVG. Will everything be messed up, if I load and save it with Inkscape?

Inkscape strives to avoid changing the SVG just because it does not
recognize some of the SVG elements, however it *does* make changes:

All objects will get unique "id" attributes. If already existing and unique, they will be preserved, otherwise one will be derived from node name.

Some sodipodi: and inkscape: namespaced metadata will be added to the beginning of document.

If you edit a gradient, that gradient will be broken up into 2 linked gradients - one defining color vector, another one position.

Changing any style property forces reconstructing of the whole 'style' attribute, which means CSS (not XML) comments will be lost and formatting of CSS may change.

The formatting style of the SVG file will be changed to follow the style hardcoded into Inkscape.

There is ongoing work to allow Inkscape to better preserve hand-created SVG markup but it is a very difficult task requiring a lot of infrastructure work and will happen very gradually - but help is always appreciated.

Inkscape and renderer X show my SVGs differently. What to do?

That depends on X.
We accept Batik and Adobe SVG plugin as
authoritative SVG renderers because they are backed by some of the
the authors of the SVG standard and really care about compliance. This
may not be true for other renderers. So if you are having a problem
with some renderer, please try the same file with either Batik or
Adobe, or better yet, with both (they are free and cross-platform). If
you still see a discrepancy with Inkscape rendering, we want to look
into it. Please submit a bug;
don't forget to attach a sample of the problem file to the bug report, and ideally include screenshots too.

Inkscape and other programs

Why the split from Sodipodi?

Inkscape started as a code fork of Sodipodi. The main reasons were differences in objectives and in development approach. Inkscape's objective is to be a fully compliant SVG editor, whereas for
Sodipodi SVG is more a means-to-an-end of being a vector illustration tool. Inkscape's development approach emphasizes open developer access to the codebase, as well as using and contributing back to 3rd party libraries and standards such as HIG, CSS, etc. in preference to custom solutions. Reusing existing shared solutions helps developer to focus on the core work of Inkscape.

For background, it may also be worth reviewing Lauris'
Sodipodi direction post from Oct 2003, and his thoughts on SVG,
licensing, and the value of splitting the project into two
independent branches.

What's the difference between Inkscape and Dia?

SVG is a useful format for creating diagrams, though, so we hope as
Inkscape grows as a fully-featured SVG editor, it will also be useful
for making attractive diagrams too. Several of us hope Inkscape will
become a useful technical drawing tool and work on features with that
goal in mind. However, Dia provides a number of useful capabilities
such as support for UML, autogeneration of diagrams, etc. that are well
beyond the scope of a general SVG editor. Ideally both Inkscape and Dia
can share various bits of code infrastructure and third party libraries.

Is this intended to replace Flash?

While SVG is often identified as a "Flash replacement", SVG has a huge
range of other uses outside that of vector animation. Replacing Flash
is not one of Inkscape's primary intents. If SVG can replace Flash, and
Inkscape can help, that's great, but there's a lot more to SVG than
web animation that is worth exploring. (See also SMIL)

Is Inkscape a replacement for The GIMP or Photoshop?

In most cases, no. They're used for two very different things. Inkscape is used for creating vector drawings, such as laying out a poster or creating a fancy logo, whereas bitmap editors are for working on raster images, such as touching up a photograph. In many projects, you would need to use both Inkscape and a bitmap editor (such as GIMP), for example, to add bitmap effects to an image exported from Inkscape.

However, currently bitmap editors are often used for common tasks they are not well equipped for, such as creating web page layouts, logos, or technical line art. In most cases, this is because users are not aware of the power (or even the existence) of the modern vector editors. Inkscape wants to amend this situation, and to raise a vector editor to the status of an essential desktop tool for everyone, rather than an exotic specialized tool that only professionals use.

Will Inkscape be part of the Gnome-Office?

Inkscape will need to mature a bit further before this can be
considered. Specifically, better support for embedding (Bonobo) is needed,
and the Gnome-Print subsystem needs to be tested more thoroughly (help very much appreciated here).
If you can compile a recent version of Inkscape and help us with testing it would be very useful.

What formats can Inkscape import/export?

With the help of extensions, Inkscape can open/save as PDF, EPS, AI, Dia, Sketch and some others.

Inkscape can natively import most raster formats (JPG, PNG, GIF, etc.) as bitmap images, but it can only export PNG bitmaps.

See FileTypes for discussion about file formats that people would like to see supported, and third-party tools that can be used to convert files to or from SVG.

What can I do with *.cdr (Corel Draw Vector drawing file) files in Inkscape? I have got my images in *.cdr files and I would like to continue in *.SVG.

Open CDR file Corel Draw. Save it as CGM file. It will save only vector graphics. It will not save bitmap graphics.

Open CGM file in OpenOffice Impress. Copy to Open Office Draw and insert original JPG or another bitmap graphics. Save file as ODG And you can continue in Open Office Draw program.)

Select all (CTRL+A)

Export as SVG.

Open SVG file in Inkscape and correct mistakes if they appear.

I exported an SVG file from Adobe Illustrator, edited it in Inkscape, and imported back to AI, but there my changes are lost!

That's because Adobe cheats. It creates a valid SVG, but apart from the SVG code it also writes to the file, in encoded binary form, the entire AI-format source file of the image. Inkscape, of course, edits the SVG part of the image and leaves the encoded binary untouched. But when you import the SVG file back to AI, it completely disregards the SVG code with its edits and reads directly from the encoded AI binary. Therefore, any SVG changes are lost. To work around it, in Inkscape open the XML Editor and remove the non-SVG elements (everything not with the svg: prefix in its name).

Development topics

What are Inkscape's development goals?

Inkscape wants to be a complete SVG-compliant vector graphics editor. Apart from standards compliance, our primary goals are stability, performance, state of the art vector graphics features, and an efficient and innovative user interface.

What language and toolkit is Inkscape built upon?

The codebase Inkscape inherited from Sodipodi was C/Gtk based. There is an ongoing effort to convert the codebase to C++/Gtkmm. The ultimate goal is to simplify the code and make it more maintainable. We invite you to join us. Just don't mention Qt. :)

What is your position on code sharing with other projects?

Yes, sharing of code libraries with other projects is highly desirable,
provided the right conditions exist. A good candidate for a library
will be mature, widely distributed, well documented, and actively
maintained. It should not introduce massive dependency problems for
end-users and should be stable, powerful, and lightweight. It should
strive to do one thing, and do it well. Libraries that don't meet all
the criteria will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

How to create an Inkscape extension?

You don't need to know much, if anything, about Inkscape internals to create a useful extension. Aaron Spike, the author of most Python extensions that come with Inkscape, wrote a helpful web page (including a series of tutorials) on creating extensions in Python (Perl and Ruby are also supported).

What's a good way to get familiar with the code?

You can start with the Doxygen documentation. There you can find not only the usual Doxygen stuff but also different categorized views into the inkscape source.

In the Documentation section of the Inkscape website you can find some high-level diagrams and links to other documentation that's been produced such as the man page. Historically, this codebase has not been kept well
documented so expect to find many areas where the only recourse is to
work through the code itself. However, we place importance on working
to change this, and to flesh out the documentation further as we go.

Some developers have found that testing patches is a good way to quickly
get exposure to the code, as you see how other developers have
approached making changes to the codebase. Other developers like to
pick an interesting feature request (or perhaps a feature wish of their
own) and focus on figuring out how to implement it. Occasionally we
also have large scale grunt-work type changes that need to be applied to
the codebase, and these can be easy ways to provide significant
contributions with very little experience.

Getting beyond initial exposure, to the next stage of understanding of
the codebase, is challenging due to the lack of documentation, however
with some determination it can be done. Some developers find that
fixing a crash bug by tracing execution through the various subsystems,
brings good insights into program flow. Sometimes it is educational to
start from an interesting dialog box and tracing function calls in the
code. Or perhaps to start with the SVG file loader and follow the flow
into and through the parser. Other developers have found that writing
inline comments into the code files to be highly useful in gaining
understanding of a particular area, with the fringe benefit of making
that bit of code easy for future developers to pick up, too.

Once you feel far enough up the learning curve, implementing features
will firm up your experience and understanding of the codebase. Be
certain to also write test cases and documentation, as this will be of
great help to future developers and thus ensure the longevity of the
codebase.

What is the size and composition of the codebase?

The latest statistics are available at this page. The code is somewhat modular, but less so than we would like. If you're interested in some specific part of the codebase, feel free to ask developers.

What rendering engine do you use?

Currently we use our own renderer called livarot. We plan to migrate to Cairo when it is mature enough.

What is the development platform?

Most developers work on Linux. However it is also possible to compile Inkscape on Windows; this page provides detailed instructions for this as well as for cross-compiling Windows binaries on Linux.

What is the Linux command to download the code through Subversion?

Generic directions are under the Subversion link on the inkscape sourceforge page. Note, however, that the command given on the sourceforge page will check out all modules of the Inkscape project and all branches of those modules.

To only check out the latest copy of the main branch (also called "trunk") of the Inkscape program, do:

where MODULE_NAME is the name of the module you want to check out. Other modules you can check out include: experimental, our development "scratchpad" for working up prototypes; inkscape_web, which holds our website files; and inkscape_project, which holds config files and other project-level things. You can use our Subversion viewer to get the names of available modules.

where MODULE_NAME is the name of the module you want to check out, and BRANCH_NAME is the name of the branch that you are interested in. You can use our Subversion viewer to get the names of available modules and branches.

These commands will download the requested module into a directory named either trunk or BRANCH_NAME, depending on whether you chose to check out the trunk or a branch.

If you'd like to later test out a different branch of any of Inkscape's modules, you can do that by running

Note that Subversion supports the ability to move individual subdirectories of a working copy of a module to different branches of that module, so if you want to switch an entire working copy to a different branch, run svn switch in the root directory of the working copy.

How are feature requests selected for implementing?

Many developers become involved because they wish to "scratch an itch",
so of course if they wish to work on a particular feature, then by
definition that one will receive implementational attention. This is
the primary mechanism by which features get implemented.

Inkscape also strives to take user requests for features seriously,
especially if they're easy to do or mesh with what one of the existing
developers already wants to do, or if the user has helped the project in
other ways.

If you have a feature that you'd really like to see implemented, but
others aren't working on, the right thing to do is delve into the code
and develop it yourself. We put great importance on keeping the
development process open and straightforward with exactly this in mind.

I'd prefer the interface to look like ...

Understandably, many users are accustomed to other programs
(such as Illustrator, the GIMP, etc.)
and would prefer Inkscape to follow them in design.
Inkscape developers are constantly examining other projects and on the
look for better interface ideas.
A large motivation is to make the application follow the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines, which has a
number of rules in how the interface is made. The Inkscape developers
also seek advice and ideas from other GUI app designers, such as the
GIMP crew, AbiWord, and Gnumeric; they've been at it longer and we view
them as an excellent source of battle tested experience.

But please understand that the Inkscape interface will, at the end of
the day, be the "Inkscape interface". We will strive to find our own balance of
compatibility with common drawing programs, wishes of our userbase, good
workflow, creativity of our developers, and compliance with UI guidelines. It's
unlikely that this balance will meet every user's wish, or achieve 100%
compliance with the various platform specific Interface Guidelines,
or include every developer's idea, and if it did it probably wouldn't be as good. ;-)

Usually when we discuss interface look and feel, we arrive at the
conclusion that, really, it should be configurable so that each user can
flip a few switches and get an app that is most cozy to them.
However, flexibility should not be used as an excuse not to make tough decisions when they are called for.

Legal

What License is Inkscape released under?

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 [2]. In short, this means you are free to use and distribute Inkscape for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, without any restrictions. You are also free to modify the program as you wish, but with the only restriction that if you distribute the modified version, you must provide access to the source code of the distributed version.